You've Been Warned--Again

Book 0: BookShots

by James Patterson, Derek Nikitas

Genres: Supernatural suspense; Suspense; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Going home for the holidays can be murder.

Joanie was dreading Thanksgiving with her family at their strange new house. And that was before she saw her brother Alan standing in the kitchen. It was hard to know what to say to him, seeing as he'd died five years ago....

BookShots
LIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSON
Novels you can devour in a few hours
Impossible to stop reading
All original content from James Patterson

Release date: October 3, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 144

Sample

Prologue

Only two homicides have ever been horrific enough to shake Detective Medeiros. The first was a decade ago. The second is today, a Black Friday morning after the worst Thanksgiving nor’easter he can remember.

And it’s at the same house.

Sitting in the back of an evidence van, Medeiros is glad to have escaped the crime scene. There’s a tremor in his spine. It’s not the cold. It’s not the carnage. He’s seen all that before.

It’s his soul recoiling from a darkness that lingers even here, under a stark winter sun.

It’s the presence of evil.

A young technician takes the plowed path from the house. The snowbanks flanking her are three feet high. She’s carrying what looks like a knife in a white paper evidence bag.

“May I?” Medeiros asks.

She’s more than happy to give it up. On closer inspection, it’s not a knife but a letter opener bearing the etching:

The Fálcon Hotel, New York City

A faint but chilling memory brushes the back of the detective’s neck.

“Another bedroom find,” the tech says. “Dried blood on the blade, if you can call it that.”

“If it stabs…” Medeiros muses.

The young tech climbs into the van. She wants heat for a minute, and Medeiros doesn’t begrudge her. The house itself has become a vast icebox after a power outage, doors left open, windows smashed. Mirrors coated with frost and snowfall on the furniture.

Already they’ve collected a Browning shotgun and three spent shells, plus an antique Colt “Peacemaker” revolver. Nearly ten thousand dollars in loose one-hundred-dollar bills. A broken candelabra, also bloody.

“They used to call this place the Thorpe House, yeah?” the tech asks.

Medeiros nods, casting another glance at the residence in question. It looms on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, on the southernmost stretch of Rhode Island. It’s a monstrous estate, a seaside cottage built to palatial scale.

“The Thorpe family owned this land from colonial times,” Medeiros explains. “Till ten years ago.”

“The other murders.” She lifts a Ziploc bag. “This is them, right? The Thorpes?”

In the bag is a faded family portrait. Designer clothes and haunted expressions. Looking at the picture, Medeiros feels a weight press on his soul. Maybe his priest would understand, or the witness they’ve got waiting back at the station.

“You were here? Ten years ago? For the other…” the tech asks.

“That was my case, too.”

“But these people just bought the place?”

“New York City transplants, to my understanding.”

“So what are they doing with a picture of a dead family from ten years ago?”

Medeiros lets the question hang. Soon enough, they’ll piece a story together. They’ll take the witness testimony and correlate it with what they’ve found. They’ll close the case.

But Medeiros has been to this house before. Here, there are deeper machinations that no police report will ever explain. A hunger that won’t abate.

Not until the whole house burns and its charred remains are bulldozed into the sea.

Chapter 1

This is the last time I’ll ever see my family.

In the back of a Subaru Forester, I huddle against my boyfriend, Nate, desperate to stay warm. Father’s personal assistant drives us over winding back roads in the middle of a freak November snowstorm.

We’re headed to my parents’ new house, a place I’ve never visited. Like some kind of tyrant king, Father has summoned me, his youngest daughter, for a Thanksgiving feast.

He’ll disown me by the end of the day. I’m sure of it. Once the Whitmores hear my decision, I’ll be totally banished. And maybe that’s what I’ll choose to be thankful for today.

Father’s assistant has just fetched Nate and me from the train station. Trish is her name. She’s a recent hire, but I doubt she’ll last, poor lady. Anyone forced to deal with my family as a full-time job deserves a Medal of Valor. She twitches every time the wipers squeak across the windshield. I don’t know if it’s the weather or the Whitmores that have her spooked.

Same deal for me. I can’t stop shivering from the cold and the dread of what this day will bring. “Who even knew there could be a middle-of-nowhere in tiny Rhode Island?” I ask Trish.

She gives me this forced laugh.

“You’re going to try to make it back to the city tonight?”

“Dear God, yes,” she exhales.

Nate marvels at the gnarled tree branches reaching over the road, the granite stone walls almost buried in snow. He’s got zero clue what he’s in for. Every time I try to warn him, it sounds like I’m just recounting the plot of some terrible stage play.

“Joanie, it’s like a Robert Frost poem,” he says.

“Except we’re in H. P. Lovecraft country.”

“Aw, you’re just nervous. It’ll be great,” he says. I love that Nate’s an optimist, but he’s never met my family. He’s from Tampa, so he carries sunshine around wherever he goes.

All I can hope is that he’ll make it through this visit with his usual grace intact. We’ll scratch “meet the parents” off the bucket list, never look back, and live happily ever after.

I’ve almost convinced myself to be just that hopeful when out of nowhere something leaps over a low stone wall, straight into Trish’s path. It happens in slow motion, like a dream.

Trish cries out. She stomps the brake so hard the Forester fishtails. I grab the armrest, convinced we’re going to roll into a ditch. All my worry is realized in a sudden rush—

The car skids to a stop. Silence, except our panicked breathing. The creature in the road stands still, its breath huffing white. It isn’t a deer. It’s something that shouldn’t be out here in the woods at all.

A black goat.

Its horns curl up like motorcycle handlebars. Its long tuft of chin hair ripples in the bitter wind.

“Would you look at that?” Nate chuckles slowly. “You don’t see that every day.”

Trish places a hand against her heart. Her last coping mechanism has just been busted, and I don’t blame her.

I reach over the seat and grip her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re safe,” I tell her. I don’t know Trish, but it seems like she should know I’ve got her back just now.

“I like his beard,” Nate says, stroking his own wavy facial hair.

I don’t know where it possibly could have come from, but this random goat gives me the creeps. The creature watches us through the windshield with its almost-demonic slitted pupils.

When Trish finally honks, the goat throws back its head in disgust. It bleats like a man strapped to a torture device. The bell on its neck gives an empty clang.

I’ve had enough of this place already. I just want Trish to turn around and drive straight to Manhattan without looking back. Nate and I could spend the holiday alone and head back to classes at Columbia on Monday, no harm done.

The goat stands its ground, so Trish steers around it. As we pass, it swivels its head, watching us. It stares so unblinkingly and intensely that I think it will ram its horns into the car.

Another mile later, we turn down a snow-covered drive. A gate of black iron rails slides open on its tracks. As Trish drives between the pillars, my sense of d. . .